


Strange Ways

by beetle



Series: Strange Days [2]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Doctor Strange (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Afro-Romanian Karl Mordo, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Attraction, Backstory Tweaks, Banter, Character Development, Developing Relationship, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Porn, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Emotionally Repressed, Feels, Friendship, Humor, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Lotsa Smut, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Mentor/Protégé, Most of the Mental Health stuff is implied or backstory-related, Mutual Pining, Obsession, Opposites Attract, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Smut, Teacher-Student Relationship, Timeline Shenanigans, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Wong is always right, flirtation, implied emotional abuse, timeline tweak
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 01:55:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20770607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: The immediate aftermath of Karl and Stephen’s sparring match and admission of mutual attraction. This first part is nothing but porn. Some parts are romantic, and some are funny, but it’s basically faceted porn.December 19 NOTE:WHOOOT! Back on track! Writing chapter two and hoping to post before the New Year!





	Strange Ways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MianMimi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MianMimi/gifts), [zenkitty555](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zenkitty555/gifts), [flyingonfeatherlesswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingonfeatherlesswings/gifts).

> Second fic of the “Strange Days” AU series, set during the 2016 film. Mostly MCU canon-compliant, except where it isn’t. Spoilers. Angst. Humor. More Wong. And three parts, because . . . my plate isn’t full enough, fandom-wise. See tags.  
  
  
  
**For MianMimi, Zenkitty555, and Flyingonfeatherlesswings:** Without the folk working in this pairing tag, but especially you three, I wouldn't have started this series. Any good in these freshman efforts of mine is largely down to your examples, many of which I've lurked in. I just want you to know that you rock and that I thank you for the inspiration. And for making it look SO DAMN EFFORTLESS AND FUN THAT I COULDN'T HELP BUT JUMP IN <3

I

“Sooooooo. . . .”

Stephen Strange seems . . . somewhat anxious.

Though, _unusually spooked_, is also a spot-on assessment. Almost as spooked as he had been after the Ancient One had shown him the Multiverse.

From his perch on the very edge of the right side of Karl’s bed, he appears to be taking in every inch of Karl’s room—a good deal larger than his own student room, and with a small, fanatically neat office area across from the bed. The office area where Karl is leaning against the leading edge of his desk, amused and expectant, with his arms crossed over his chest.

The last hour of the day’s overcast sunlight—the only illumination Karl ever needs or uses in his room, before nightfall—has lent a simple, solemn, almost sacred-seeming pearl-gray brilliance. Nearer his single window, Karl can see dust motes dance, caught in the chill, errant drafts of which Kamar-Taj has so many.

Beyond the office, in his bedroom proper, aside from his bed, night-table, weapons-rack, footlocker, and a chair near that window, Karl’s living space is Spartan, and he likes it that way.

In fact, Stephen Strange is the most complicated, decadent bit of bric-a-brac this room has seen in the decades since Karl has occupied it.

Now, that nervous, unusually quiet bit of bric-a-brac is at last managing to look Karl in the eyes. His own seem a melancholy, Atlantic gray-blue, thanks to the overcast light and the smile he offers is small, and also simple and solemn. Brilliant. This is the first time Strange has met Karl’s steady, unwavering gaze for the better part of five silent minutes, since Karl had shut the door to his room behind them. Strange had met Karl’s gaze, smirked wickedly—also anxiously—then bee-lined for the bed, claiming the right edge of it before losing his steam and nerve.

Karl’s lack of proximity and seeming disinterest in correcting it are obviously not helping Strange’s composure or bravado, and for some reason . . . that makes Karl want to grin.

“Y'know, it’d be a lot easier to kiss you if you weren’t smirking at me from halfway across Kathmandu,” Strange finally says, that charming smile both widening and warming.

“Who says I’m interested in making this—any of it—easier for you?” _Or for me?_ Karl thinks, suddenly closer to a lengthy brood than the desire to canoodle. Even if it’s with the most beautiful man he’s ever met.

Strange grins and braces his shaking hands on Karl’s neatly made bed. Then he leans back a little while giving Karl a slow, savoring once-over that Karl feels like kisses and caresses and . . . other stimuli not half so tender and gentle. . . .

Karl shivers and Strange hums. “Doesn’t seem like you’re making it easier on yourself, either. Though,” he drawls nonchalantly, slouching back a bit more, as if he’s used to lazing about in Karl’s bed and Karl’s room and Karl’s _life_, “you seem like the type who likes it kinda . . . _hard_.”

That half-entendre and accompanying eyebrow-waggle aren’t even worth the eye-rolling, but Karl does it, anyway. This seems to be a day for indulging both his worst nature and Strange’s simplistic, Yankee sense of humor.

“You have all the subtlety and wit one tends to expect of your countrymen, I’ll grant you,” Karl notes, kneeling to undo the fastens of his Boots. Once they’re off—with Karl’s socks draped over the tops—and placed to the left side of his desk, Karl straightens, but doesn’t go back to leaning. He stands squarely, feet braced at shoulder-width, and rolls his shoulders slowly, as he had before their sparring match.

“I, ah . . . I take that as a compliment,” Strange declares, his eyes glued to Karl’s every motion. Karl’s responding smile, as he untucks his shirt, is placid and purposely condescending.

“You may take it however you choose, Strange.”

“Isn’t that _my line, Mordo_?” Another eyebrow waggle and this time, Karl simply sighs. “And could you maybe call me _Stephen_? Since . . . well, we’ll _hopefully_ be swapping spit sometime soon.”

“_Steeephen_,” Karl says, both agreement and test, as well as temptation and seduction. Strange groans, then gapes when Karl removes his shirt with neither haste nor hesitance, then drops the garment on his desk. “_Stephen Strange. The Strange-ster. The Strange-inator. El Strange-erino Grande_. . . .”

Strange shudders and sits up suddenly. “Okay, when _I_ do that, it’s quirky and cool and endearing. But when _you_ do it . . . in _that voice_ . . . I nearly come in my pants.” His chuckle is nervous and a little shaky as he hunches forward, rocking a bit. “That seems a tad lopsided and unfair.”

“Such is life.” Karl pads slowly, deliberately from his office, into his bedroom—a good thirteen steps in Karl’s measured stride—and over to his bed and the man in it. As he gets closer, Strange’s eyes get rounder and wider. “Though, in all honesty, _your voice_ has been driving me to distraction since the day we met.”

Strange smiles when Karl skirts the foot of the bed and the footlocker, then stops in front of him: close enough for them to touch each other, though neither of them makes the attempt. Strange merely keeps smiling up at Karl and Karl stares down at Strange, frowning a little.

“I. . . .” Strange swallows, then shakes his head ruefully as he looks away. “I wanna run my hands all over you. Learn and memorize you inch by inch in every way possible. But, ah, I doubt that with _these_ hands I’d be able to make it worth either of our while.”

On Karl’s duvet, Strange’s hands are clenched into fists that look red and painful. The shaking is so pronounced, that the scars on those fists seem to writhe in agitation.

Letting the sympathetic ache which he always feels for Strange regarding his hands rule him, if only temporarily, Karl moves closer, still, so that Strange has to spread his legs wider. Karl stands patiently in the vee of Strange’s thighs until the other man finally looks up again. The expression on his face is equal parts yearning and frustration.

Karl reaches out, his own fingers trembling, as he _very nearly_ brushes Strange’s cheek. His mouth. The line of his jaw. But instead of doing any of those, he allows himself that half-smile and allows his arm to settle at his side once more.

“I was offered a kiss, as I recall,” he murmurs, and Strange searches his eyes intently . . . then his own smile begins again, slow and so sweetly relieved that Karl’s entire chest aches from the ridiculous thrashing of his heart.

“Well, then, get down here, and claim it if you still _want it_,” Strange says, patting his lap with his unsteady hands before bracing himself on them again, to either side of him.

Karl smiles, as dark, deliberate, and challenging as his gaze. He straddles Strange’s thighs, kneeling on the bed first with his right knee then, when Strange catches on and closes his legs, the left one. Then Karl braces his own steady, strong hands on Strange’s bony-strong shoulders. Strange, gazing up at him as if he’s a very clever but divinable magic trick, smiles and places his right hand gently on Karl’s waist, just above his trousers. His hand is tremoring, cool and soft but for the fingertips, which seem to spark and burn and _thrum_ with eagerness. With the memory of mystical power and the memory of focused touch.

“Wow,” Strange breathes, his hand clenching slightly, then releasing as his fingertips seem to pulse and throb against Karl’s skin. He’s staring at his ruined hand as if it’s just been blessed. “You feel so warm and _amazing_ . . . like there’s purpose and power and focus, all thrumming and coursing through your body. Through muscle and bone, and leaping right under your _skin_ . . . fuck, Karl, you feel . . . like a _miracle_. And I’ve held human hearts and brains in my hands. I’ve held newborns that _I helped_ to keep from being _stillborn_. I even brought a few back from the damn dead, but _you_ . . . _you’re_ the first miracle I’ve ever felt. The first I ever _believed_. You make sense. _I know you and you make sense to me._ More than anything ever has and _especially_ to my damn _hands_,” Strange decides, sliding a hand that still tremors, but has grown warm, up Karl’s left ribcage. His thumb-tip soothes muscles that jump and twitch with the passage of his drawn-out admiration.

It’s only as his index and middle fingertips near Karl’s left nipple, which is already tightening in anticipation of Strange’s touch and the anticipation of _more_, that Strange’s eyes trace a path back up to Karl’s face, all awe, threaded with worry.

“You _do_ still wanna, right? Still _want._ . . ?” Strange’s brow furrows and his hand holds its position. His eyes are more serious and hopeful than Karl has seen, thus far. “Karl . . . _may I still ki_—”

Karl doesn’t think about his next action, merely places _his_ index and middle fingers over Stephen Strange’s motive, sensual, pretty, troublemaking, _distracting_ lips. Something he’s frequently wanted to do but had restrained himself from even contemplating, for fear that just a simple silencing of the man’s endless spot-chatter might take them somewhere inappropriate.

Now, he couldn’t help himself even if he tried. Couldn’t do aught, other than let his fingertips settle reverently on Strange’s mouth—across warm, plush, perfect lips that pucker infinitesimally to greet his fingertips. Lips which Karl has daydreamed about and brooded over since the moment he first glimpsed them under and through unkempt facial fur.

He’s wanted nothing more than to explore their softness and test their sensitivity with _every_ part of his anatomy. Most intensely, his own mouth: he wants to map and memorize Strange’s lips and tongue and teeth with his own. And then. . . .

Well. Karl hasn’t let himself get ahead of himself—get beyond the simplest, safest imaginings, for fear of setting a fire in his flesh that no other substance—_no other flesh, save Strange’s_, could ever quell or cool.

So, just as in his restrained imaginings, the exploration of Stephen Strange’s distracting, wicked—silly, sweet—mouth begins with Karl’s careful, but tender fingertips tracing its outline.

Strange smiles against Karl’s fingertips, somehow increasing the chill-burn-tingle of contact, then ghosts a feather-light, but lingering kiss across those tingling finger-pads.

And now, Karl knows for fact what he’d before only surmised:

The fire in his flesh has been set since the moment he met Strange, and _no one_, including Strange himself, can or will _ever_ quell or cool this fire. It will burn Karl without consuming him, until. . . .

Until it eventually _does_ consume him, as all such fires surely must.

Karl traces and teases—himself, more than Strange, he’s certain—while holding Strange’s pale, heated gaze. That smile turns into one of Strange’s crooked smirks and the man suddenly nips the tips of Karl’s fingers. Before Karl can even give voice to the wanton moan that instinctively comes from his throat, Strange is laving Karl’s fingertips with obscenely wet swirls of tongue and gentle, but audible sucking.

And certainly, Karl has been rendered gobstruck, staring for eternity before Stephen finally smirks and stops fellating his fingers, pulling off of them with a showy, loud popping sound. Then he preens when Karl makes a hoarse and strangled moan, sits heavily on his lap, then leans in until his forehead rests against Strange’s.

“_Steeeephen_,” he whispers, almost gasping, and Strange makes a hungry sound low in his throat.

“You have _no idea_ how much of my day is fantasizing about laying you down and learning every inch of you with my mouth,” he growls, his hands on Karl’s sides sliding down to and along his thighs. Strange squeezes tight, with a small wince at the effort, but Karl has no doubt that trademark smirk is now a manic, dangerous grin. “Been hungry and thirsty for you since _go_.”

Karl sighs, his breath gusting gently against Strange’s mouth. “St. . .range,” he murmurs, soft and intimate, cupping Strange’s cheek in his hand. This time, Strange is the one to sigh. And he bobs up and in to press a chaste, brief but intensely fierce kiss on Karl’s mouth.

“But I _don’t_,” he goes on, his growl cracking a bit with his attempt at restraint right before he stops himself, then tries again, “I promise I don’t take you and how much I want you for granted. I promise that my eyes aren’t getting bigger than my appetite for you, just because you’ve become my fucking Everest of hot-guys.” His lips and breath stutter and hitch, hot and humid, on Karl’s lips, before Strange presses another, gentler kiss to Karl’s mouth . . . as faint as a feather-brush. “My eyes _couldn’t_ outgrow my appetite, because I want it _all—all of you, all the time._ I don't think I could be satisfied with anything less.”

Karl represses the moan, this time, but is unable to repress the way his body starts shivering for absolutely no reason . . . and refuses to stop.

“If you knew the half of who I am, Strange . . . who I . . . _was_,” he begins with quiet reluctance and against his will. Strange shakes his head a little.

“_Nawp_. Not unpackin’ all that just now. _Now_ is for kisses,” he says, playful, but final. “And you should _really_ start calling me _Stephen_, Karl.”

Then he’s surging up and into another kiss that’s far from chaste or brief, and is still intensely fierce, even in its softer, tender moments.

It starts off just as desperate and hard, ravenous and overwhelming as Karl needs, and has more than half-expected Strange’s . . . _Stephen’s_ kisses would be. But despite that, his lips are so soft and supple, the sweetness of them and their kisses seems to burn Karl’s lips, even as they soothe that burn . . . then reignite it.

Stephen’s mouth also tastes sweet . . . and wholesomely so. _Subtly_ so, like baking apples and floral, but unsweetened tea.

There’s no doubt (for either of them, surely) what this kiss is and means—what with Stephen trying to devour Karl, mouth first, and Karl’s needy-aggressive submission to being so devoured. He’s hanging on—arms now wrapped around Stephen’s neck for balance and for dear life . . . for the ride—and willing to take not only what he can get, but whatever Stephen decides to give him.

_This kiss is exactly_ what Karl’s been needing and wanting, and then some. It’s awakening him in ways he’d forgotten it was even possible to _be awake_, and even aside from the obvious.

Though, _the obvious_ is getting quite the powerful awakening, too. The friction of his trousers is both treat and torment, and it leaves him writing and shaking, and grinding and snaking his hips for more. Stephen’s unsteady hands settle on those hips—not restraining, but possessive and admiring, and urging Karl closer to his body along his lap.

As Karl discovers for a fact that he isn’t the only one who’s painfully aroused by the moment, they both groan. Stephen then lifts his hips in short, sharp thrusts that slide and prod behind Karl’s balls.

Or, they would if neither of them was still wearing trousers.

Stephen groans again, half-choked sounding and frustrated, his hands squeezing and shoving down on Karl’s hips even as he, himself, thrusts up.

Then Stephen’s trembling hands slide around to clutch at Karl’s arse, anchoring roughly in the material of the cursed trousers before seeking Karl’s waistband. Stephen jams his hands under the material without pause, his cool, scar-uneven palms settling on Karl’s burning-hot skin.

Tremoring fingers grasp at then clutch at Karl, gripping and squeezing and memorizing muscle—teasingly pressing between his thighs to precisely finger his perineum and up between his cheeks. His trembling fingers circle and test the entrance to Karl’s body, pressing in with the very tip of his index finger.

Which, despite decades of self-elected celibacy—or, more likely, _because of it_—breaks Karl down to his bone marrow, releasing pent-up need and want in the form of an aggressive, whimpering moan that shakes them both. And possibly even the foundations of Kamar-Taj. In these few moments, Stephen’s dry, shaking finger, not even a quarter of an inch inside him and barely moving, is better, and more satisfying and igniting, than hours of dedicated attention from of the prick of his most talented and devoted lover.

Not that Karl has had many of those.

Then Stephen is taking advantage of Karl’s shivering, clinging distraction to deepen their previously gentled kiss once more, withdrawing his finger carefully and settling his hands on Karl’s cheeks for kneading, gripping, and squeezing. And, for some unknowable span, it’s as if time slows, then stops, and all there is, is the kiss. There’s no them, no world, no anything that isn’t the divinely dirty, sinfully sweet glide and duel of tongues, the occasional clash of teeth and nipping of each other’s lips, and slick, soft exploration that leaves them both gasping. And, eventually, completely breathless.

Stephen breaks the kiss, surfacing and gulping down air as if also trying to store it up as quickly as possible so he can get back to their iteration of eternity. Karl, rather unconcerned with his own breathlessness, dizziness, and near-swooning disorientation, makes a sound so needy that, at any other, more cogent time, he’d have been utterly mortified. Now, he simply seeks out Stephen’s kiss-swollen mouth, with a demanding groan.

“Wow. _Fuck_.” Stephen moans into the kiss, then sinks into it, full fathom five, recreating their eternity again, but only briefly, alas. He surfaces once more, leaning their faces together and grinning on Karl’s mouth, beaming and madcap when he suddenly sits back again. “Dis. _Ass_. Tho,” he growls, hoarse and still ravenous, his burning-sky eyes locked on Karl’s and his hands gripping as tight as they can. Which isn’t as tight as Karl normally prefers, but perhaps tight enough to leave hand-shaped bruises. . . .

Karl can hope, anyway, and does.

“And this _mouth_,” Stephen adds, stealing small, sweet, kisses that feel like promises, though of what, Karl chooses not to guess. “You taste like spice . . . like nutmeg, cinnamon, and . . . gingerbread . . . like Christmas Morning.”

Bemused, Karl can only accept the seeming compliment and make a mental note to Google “Christmas.” He knows very little of it beyond general information. Neither the Mordo family nor the Krowler family had been Christian, aside from whatever token, public face had been needed to keep their societal standings.

And though Baron Nikolai Mordo’s religious leanings had been innocuously pagan (mostly), to say that _the viscount’s_ views had _not been_—not _innocuous,_ anyway—is to understate by several million orders of magnitude.

The man had recognized no god, other than himself. His daughter had, unfortunately, agreed. As had his grandson, for the first two-plus decades of his life.

“Hey.”

Karl surfaces from _brooding_ this time, not from a chakra-realigning kiss, and finds himself staring into Stephen’s bright, keen eyes.

“Whatever you’re suddenly thinking about, now would be an _excellent_ time to stop. And if you’re in need of help with that,” he rumbles, taking up his thrusting once more while squeezing and kneading Karl’s arse again—indulging in both with genuine and earnest fervor. “If you’re in need of a surefire distraction, I have some ideas about that which I’d be happy to demonstrate in detail.”

Karl smiles, still feeling somewhat melancholy, and leans in to steal a kiss of his own . . . but it’s far from sweet, if the way Stephen swears and complains when Karl breaks it is any indication.

Bracing his hands on Stephen’s coat-hanger shoulders, Karl levers himself up on his knees again, holding Stephen’s hot gaze all the way up. He hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his trousers and begins pushing them down, neither slow nor fast, without hesitance or haste.

As Karl has long-since surmised, Stephen Strange _is haste_. Passion-fast-furious-_now_. Barring that, he _also_ enjoys a slow, tortuous tease.

But a steady, undramatic pace without delicious promise overtly attached?

Not so much.

Rather, he can appreciate it, but not necessarily endure it with grace or maturity.

“Y’know, I can burn these off your body without leaving a single red mark on that _gorgeous_ skin, Master Mordo,” Stephen says, and Karl chuckles, s-l-o-w-l-y easing the waistband past his eagerly saluting prick. Stephen doesn’t even break their gaze, though his hands leave Karl’s arse with one final squeeze before latching onto Karl’s waistband and yanking down with savage glee.

“If you destroy or even damage these trousers, you won’t be welcome back here until you replace or repair them,” Karl warns and Stephen, his cool hands running up and down Karl’s outer thighs, pouts.

“C’mon, ripping clothes off each other’d be _hot_,” he finagles, and Karl snorts, stepping over the issue of Stephen’s poor hands, which are surely ill-suited to ripping anything off anyone.

“I like these trousers a great deal, Stephen. And I like sewing damaged clothing or spending money to purchase new, not at all.”

“Cheapskate,” Stephen accuses, but jokingly. Karl’s brows lift with put-on hauteur.

“If preferring frugality when I deem certain expenditures to be unnecessary and avoidable makes me a cheapskate, then I shall not contest that assessment.”

“God, the way you _talk_—instant engine-rev!” Stephen grins, and sighs happily. Then, he looks doubtful. “But, really? Frugality? C’mon, I heard you’re Old World nobility on both sides of your family—Bavarian and Romanian, and I’d _love_ to know how you managed that, by the way—and that you’re a _baron or viscount_, or something back in the _Olde Countrye_ . . . whichever _countrye_ that happens to be for you. So, I’m betting some of _your_ notions of _frugality_ differ from mine and most of the people here.”

Karl urges Stephen closer by those bony shoulders, his fingers biting into the crimson wool of Stephen’s tunic until he can feel warm, even breaths on his prick. “You were supposed to be distracting me. If that’s still your intent, then you may wish to try a different tack. _Almost any tack_, but the one you’re currently . . . unpacking.”

“Right! Ah, riiiight, yeah,” Stephen agrees, quiet and sheepish—pink-faced and apologetic. Then, with a gentle, tender kiss to the wet head of Karl’s prick—and lascivious licking of his lips immediately after, which makes Karl whimper and shiver even harder than the sweet brush of Stephen’s lips on his prick—goes back to gripping Karl’s arse, and leans up to press kisses on Karl’s abdomen. And along the definition of muscles that lead up to his chest and shoulders, too, after he pulls Karl back down to sit in his lap again. He kisses Karl’s nipples, and decides to linger there, teasing with his tongue and nipping with his teeth, while he resumes fingering Karl’s perineum.

“Yesss, hmmm. . . .” Karl approves, already lost in these sensations. He plunges his fingers into Stephen’s hair—once again holding on, rather than directing matters. Though, it’s obvious from the way Stephen’s applying his teeth to Karl’s nipples, rather more than lips or tongue, he’s catching on to Karl’s likes and . . . preferences, regarding stimulus.

When Stephen’s shaking finger breaches him again, Karl keens soft and long, bearing down on increasingly more than a quarter of an inch of determined digit. “Steeeeephen . . . _more_. . . .”

“Gladly, _Master_,” Stephen leaves off to whisper, pushing his dry finger deep enough to cause Karl discomfort in the form of feeling overfull and as if he’s burning up from the inside.

It’s a feeling Karl has . . . missed.

“Lookit you . . . _Jesus_, you’re gonna go _crazy_, when it’s my dick in here. Or my _tongue_,” Stephen notes breathlessly, leveling a sharp-fleeting nip that’s maybe a bite to Karl’s right nipple. “I’m gonna eat _every inch_ of this fine ass before I fuck it. Then maybe again, right after.” Stephen huffs out a warm breath. “Okay, _definitely again_, right after—I’m pretty psyched about the _my mouth-your ass_ combination. Longest lasting stroke-fantasy I’ve ever had. Except for the one where you tie me down, slick yourself up, and impale yourself on my—”

“No more talking, Stephen,” Karl husks, and it’s not a request. “Talking is done.”

“Yeah, but—okay. But you’re, uh, gonna want more than _saliva_ when I, ah . . . so, whaddaya have for lube in here?” Stephen asks after gruffly clearing his throat.

“That’s—” _more talking_, Karl means to say, but doesn’t finish as he instantly realizes Stephen has asked a relevant question. _The_ relevant question, “a valid and practical concern.”

“I think so, too.”

Rolling his eyes and smirking, Karl leans back a bit, feeling inordinately pleased when Stephen’s hands and arms instinctively tighten around him to keep him from tipping off his lap. After a few seconds of flailing for the handle of his night-table drawer, then in it—not that there’re many items to choose from—Karl retrieves a short, but substantially wide glass jar with a glass stopper, in answer to Stephen’s _valid and practical concern_.

Karl straightens and kisses Stephen teasingly while pressing the jar against his chest. Stephen reluctantly frees his left hand to take the jar.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . I really didn’t dare to hope you had lube nearby at all. And definitely not an econo-jar of it in your night-table,” he breathes between kisses and nips of Karl’s lips.

“Before six months ago, I wouldn’t have.”

A few more kisses and a minute later, Stephen sits back just enough to look Karl in the eye, his own wide and startled. Karl’s brows furrow, then lift with what he hopes is a passable appearance of serenity.

“You aren’t the only one with a collection of . . . stroke-fantasies, as you say.”

Stephen blinks, blushes, then starts to grin. “A _collection_, huh? Is there a card catalog for it, or did you just skip over that Old Skool-stuff and go straight to computerization and Boolean operators?”

_This time_, Karl’s take-down method is kinder and less discombobulating than the one that'd ended their sparring match—and, also, somewhat telegraphed in advance. But Karl is still pleased with its efficacy, since the maneuver ends with Stephen Strange prone in his bed. He moves the glass jar to his night-table for the moment, then kicks his trousers off all-the-way, while devouring a dazed Stephen with hungry eyes and a smile like a starving crocodile. Then, he settles into another straddle, pleased with himself, as well, when Stephen groans in response to the way Karl grinds down on his erection: slow and hard and deliberate.

And without breaking eye-contact.

Well, except for a few moments in which Stephen licks his lips with genuine hunger. Then his gaze, bright and hot with flattering and almost disturbing concupiscence, recaptures Karl’s. Then he licks his lips some more.

“So, is . . . is _this_ in your collection, Master Mordo, or do I just bring out the scary, Dominant power-bottom in you?”

“Stop talking and fuck me, Stephen,” Karl says and, again, it’s not a request.

“_Yeah—YEAH_. But I . . . _fuck_, I want you on your hands and knees, baby. _More than anything_.” Stephen grunts and wheezes and huffs as Karl scoots back along his thighs and works open his fly and makes one of his own stroke-fantasies come vividly true.

“We’ll see,” Karl allows in an even tone that really promises nothing, though his own preferences and intentions for this assignation suddenly go right out the window when he gets his first look at what Stephen’s bringing to the table, so to speak.

Stephen is flushed and circumcised and unfairly pretty—_of course_, he is. For a tall man, he’s even lengthier than Karl has imagined. But for a man who seems to naturally be underweight for his height, he’s rather more . . . _girthy_ than Karl has dared to hope, as well.

_Intimidatingly, arousingly _so.

“My, ah, nickname, pre-med, was ‘[Mr. Pringles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpkPZbgWb-o),’” Stephen admits bemusedly, yet proudly, taking a moment to make a weird length and width approximation for which Karl has no frame of reference. “It was pretty apt because—aside from the whole can-thing—once they popped, they, uh, couldn’t stop . . . if ya get me.”

“I don’t,” Karl says, still amused, if unimpressed.

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.” Stephen smiles and shrugs, neither arrogantly nor humbly, merely matter-of-factly. “But you will.”

Shivering with suddenly escalating anticipation, Karl wraps his hand around Stephen’s unexpectedly thick hard-on. The contact is a revelation for them both, if the gut-punched sounds they make are to be taken at face-value.

If the way Stephen’s eyes flutter shut, then squinch painfully tight is any indication.

If the way Karl’s world spins off its long-kept axis and onto a slightly different, but monumentally better one can be considered an accurate gauge.

“_Please_,” Stephen begs, throaty and desperate, and bucking up into Karl’s grip even as Karl starts stroking . . . slow, hard, and deliberate as his grinding had been. In seconds, Stephen’s leaking precome and broken-voiced, nonsense-swears—like an old faucet in both cases.

It occurs to Karl, as he glances at the scarred hands twisting and bunching in his sheets, that Stephen may not have had the simple extravagance of a good, punishing—or even just a _firm_—handjob in over a year. That Karl has seen Stephen struggle to hold even forks and soup spoons on chillier, more humid days. Has seen the man be unable to consistently hold even small cups of water for long enough to take more than a few sips at a time.

Karl has also seen many other things fall from Stephen’s shaking, unreliable hands, such as books and tomes, staves and other practice weapons, and writing implements.

“_I know what I want_,” Stephen had claimed, not an hour ago, “_but I’m not good at holding on when I get it_.”

Even then, Karl had known that Stephen had meant both literally and figuratively, materially _and_ metaphorically.

Karl only realizes he’s forsaken his powerful and punishing rhythm for staring at Stephen’s left hand, when Stephen inhales, deep and shuddering, and rumbles out: “Y’okay, baby?”

His brow furrowing again, even as he smiles, fond and sad, Karl takes Stephen’s left hand in his right, bringing it to his lips for a genteel, courtly kiss across the knuckles, fingers, and fingertips. He lingers at each, capturing Stephen’s gaze with his own and holding it as he teases each finger with his lips and tongue. When he resumes his stroking, his licks and kisses and nips become lascivious, but quiet sucking of each individual finger, interspersed with sucking on two or three at a time. He traces smooth, ridged scars with his tongue and moans, even as his stroking hand tightens around Stephen and slows. Alternates between stroking his prick and squeezing his balls.

“Oh, _fuck_—oh—_OH!_” Stephen’s vocalizations are neither discreet nor even modulated for the space. His low, resonant voice seems to reverberate off the walls of Karl’s room and probably echoes throughout Kamar-Taj, and the residences and businesses of Kamar-Taj-adjacent Kathmandu.

Karl knows he might care later but certainly doesn’t, now. In fact, he’s pleased that it’s _his_ ministrations that are so thoroughly undoing Stephen Strange. And he’s even more pleased that—with Stephen now shouting _Karl!_ along with his other vocalizations—anyone who hears Stephen so lost in pleasure will know that’s due to Karl Mordo.

And Karl might even be preening in his pride and satisfaction at his effect on Stephen . . . until a cool, shaking, effortful hand takes his prick in a tremoring grasp and grip, and begins an uneven, squeezing sort of stroke.

Karl makes a soft, high, breathless whimper around Stephen’s ring finger and pinky, which he knows he’ll be embarrassed about later. He _nearly_ comes right then and there, all over Stephen’s hand and wrist.

“I—I—_d-don’t_—” Karl stops fellating Stephen’s fingers to stammer out, his other hand leaving Stephen’s prick to settle on his wrist in an attempt to halt the very actions that have brought him so quickly and so close to the edge of release.

Stephen stops instantly at that _don’t_, and even in the midst of trying to wrangle his wayward, wanton body’s reactions, Karl’s heart fills with something golden and bright, tender and appreciative.

(He’s had more than one lover who hadn’t taken _please, stop_ or, _you’re hurting me!_ as an answer, let alone an unspecified _don’t_. And though having a lover who’ll stop when there’s even a modicum of doubt about consent for a sexual act is a low bar, having had even that bar not be striven for where he’s concerned, Karl will _never_ not appreciate every effort to respect and accommodate his wants and needs and pleasure. He will _never not appreciate_ the sort of lover Stephen Strange shows every sign of being.)

“Are you—am I hurting you? Is it the shaking? My hands—I . . . I didn’t think I even _could_ hurt you, my hands are so fucked and useless,” Stephen trails off in a bitter mutter, attempting to remove his hand, his gaze already averted. “I’m sorry, Karl. So, _so_ sorr—”

“_Stephen_,” Karl says, commanding but kind, too. And it works. Stephen stops his self-recriminating and, after nearly a minute, meets Karl’s gaze. Blinks, when he sees Karl is smiling with both affection and chagrin. “I only stopped you because I was surprised. Because I didn’t want this to end prematurely.” Stephen’s brow furrows, now, and he seems both confused and wary. Karl blushes and kicks himself for being so woefully out of practice at . . . any of this. “When you touched me just now, I . . . I have never been so close to coming, so quickly. Let alone so hard or with such intensity. Not ever from a single touch . . . even one so intimate and . . . longed-for.”

Biting his lip, Karl releases Stephen’s wrist after a shy, but encouraging caress. He also releases Stephen’s other hand, both of his own settling on his thighs.

Stephen’s hand, the one hovering near Karl’s face, moves slowly closer, tremoring as always, but warm now, from Karl’s lavished attention. When Karl doesn’t turn away from or try to avoid that hand, it cups his face gently, reverently. Stephen’s thumb brushes along the vertical curve of his cheek, then to the corner of his mouth when Karl turns his face a little.

Soon, somehow, they’re making and maintaining eye-contact again as the awkwardness and wariness passes quickly. Stephen smiles up at Karl, who blushes again, but returns it.

“You are _mesmerizing_ when you smile. And adorable when you blush. Beautiful and _endearing_ and . . . _your eyes_—looking into ‘em is kinda like getting flung all over the Multiverse again . . . only without the spiraling nausea, the escalating terror, and the millions of freaky little LSD-hands that kept turning into my own face.” Stephen adds with a sigh that’s surprisingly contented, his gaze unshielded and . . . adoring. “I want, more than anything, to be _the touch_ that _does it _for you. I’ll _never_ stop trying to be. But I _can’t_ be the touch that harms you. I _don’t want_ to be the touch that you suffer through or regret. Even if it’s only accidentally. If I _ever_ touch you in a way that’s harmful or, uh . . . that hurts you in a way you haven’t consented to or don’t want . . . you’ll tell me, right?”

Stephen lets go of Karl’s prick and holds up his hand. It seems to shake more than ever, and probably from the effort of gripping and stroking Karl so firmly. So brilliantly.

Karl leans into Stephen’s touch and covers the tremoring left hand cupping his face with his steady right one.

“Never mistake reserve and deliberation from me, for demurral,” he counsels, and smiles the flat, semi-menacing half-smile that makes Wong shudder and grumble. Then, he lets it mellow into a far different sort of smile. “That said, yours is a touch I’ll never regret, Stephen Strange.”

Stephen searches his eyes again before smiling, too: small and solemn.

“Alright, then. Geddown’ere and kiss me, beautiful,” he commands, all warmth and relief—then beaming satisfaction when Karl rolls his eyes but obeys slowly and deliberately, with upward-twitching lips. “_Kiss me_, Karl.”

And Karl, before that second command is finished, is doing so with gusto. He loses himself in the kiss and Stephen so fully that he doesn’t even hear the clink of the forgotten glass stopper as it’s removed from the forgotten glass jar. But he certainly notices when Stephen starts teasing and fingering him again with slippery-cool fingers. He moans appreciatively into the kiss, which he continues to control, even as Stephen stretches and prepares him with the same care and reverence with which he’d performed surgery, once upon a life. Karl’s moaning needily at least as much as he’s devouring Stephen, mouth-first.

It’s all the torment and torture he’s preferred since entering the sexual arena at fifteen. And though his tastes and ideas of what’s acceptable and fulfilling have changed dramatically (in some ways), his ultimate preferences have not.

Stephen seems to instinctively pick up on those long-held, long-since-concretized preferences, including the sort of pacing Karl most enjoys. He works slowly, but steadily at preparation, weaving pleasure, discomfort, and outright pain so inextricably as he does, that it must surely be enough to drive a saint to blasphemy. . . .

But Karl is _not_ a saint. He’s only a _very_ flawed man who _tries_ to be better, and who succeeds at that more than he fails. And though that’s never been as true of his sexual and romantic life as it is of his life overall, he’s never been one to pressure a _lover_ into places and habits that said lover would find distasteful or damaging.

Even to the detriment of his own satisfaction, he’s never done this—never put his own needs before those of a _lover_. Other, less meaningful (more transactional or even coercive) sexual dynamics, including one-night stands and the rather unsavory _missions_ assigned by his grandfather had not fallen into that category. Yet, even now, Karl regrets some of the things he’d done to past conquests either on orders, out of boredom, or simply because they’d been done to him by cruel and more powerful partners, and Karl hadn’t even understood they were _wrong_—

—and even if he had, he’d have been in no position to fight back or change the dynamic.

Squeezing his eyes shut on his past—and the way it still has the power to make his eyes sting and his chest ache—Karl rocks and clenches and impales himself on Stephen’s fingers violently. Desperate, pained, wanton moans and cries shuttle back and forth from his mouth to Stephen’s then back again . . . but they remain trapped in a prison made of supple flesh and drowning-deep kisses.

“_Baby_,” Stephen purrs into their kiss, adding his ring-finger, and speeding up his thrusts and scissoring motions, as well as obviously feeling for Karl’s prostate. “Baby, if you’re this hungry for my fingers, how hungry have you been for my dick?”

“_Very_,” Karl growls in reply, capturing Stephen’s lower lip between his teeth almost angrily, and teasing it with his tongue. But he turns the bite into a soft, slick, sucking kiss, seconds later, then murmurs: “_Fuck me_.”

“You won’t thank me if I rush through this,” Stephen tells him apologetically, and Karl smirks on those incredibly tempting lips.

“I will, if you _make me_. . . .”

When the import of that seemingly throwaway statement hits Stephen, he freezes in the middle of their current kiss and with three fingers halfway in Karl’s needy body.

“’S’at so, Master Mordo?”

Shivering, Karl hums, with eyes still tight-shut, and back to his frantic, shameless rocking and impaling. “Yes. _Please, yes_,” he breathes against Stephen’s curving mouth. He’s lost in pleasure again, both deep and raging—really . . . _drowning_—when Stephen starts thrusting again, harder, but slower and lingering, searching . . . stroking, until:

“Steeeeephen—unnnh!”

Karl can only barely hear Stephen’s smug, predatory chuckles over the thudding of his heart. Over the throbbing of every nerve-ending in his body—but especially the ones so expertly manipulated by Stephen Strange.

Over the tsunami-symphony of tingling-thrilling bliss that washes through him not just body-wide, but spirit-wide.

“Hmm-hmm-hmm . . . _this_ it, baby?” Stephen is practically purring again, and still chuckling, not that Karl is currently capable of holding that arrogance against him. He’s teasing Karl’s prostate with seemingly infinite variations of pressure and angling, exploring leisurely and thoroughly, and letting Karl’s reactions—gasps, groans, moans, whimpers, hitches, cut-off sobs, and shouts—guide him.

It isn’t long before Karl’s no longer in control of their kisses. Stephen takes over plundering Karl’s mouth while simultaneously plundering the rest of Karl’s body. And Karl is hardly surprised that when Stephen breaks the kiss suddenly, panting, that Stephen is above him and he, himself, is prone on his bed, _on his back_, with one leg hooked possessively around Stephen’s right hip and his other bent damn-near up to his temple.

Stephen holds him that way while fucking him with forceful determination and three seemingly tireless fingers.

The look of fierce concentration and need—of possessiveness and keen focus—on his face and in those shining-burning-intent eyes nearly does Karl in, in more than one way. And between Stephen’s ferocious beauty and his apparent desire to split Karl in two with just three fingers . . . control and reserve, _Master Mordo’s especial specialties_, are no longer an option.

When Stephen releases Karl’s bent left leg, Karl knows to keep it where it’s been left and hooks his hand behind his knee to make sure the leg stays just so. Stephen, meanwhile, is running his index finger along Karl’s aching prick, which cleaves close to his body and is leaking steadily.

“You have no idea.” Stephen says in a hoarse half-whisper, watching his finger drift from the tip of Karl’s prick to run through the wetness pooling low on Karl’s abdomen. Then his eyes tick to Karl’s face and he smiles, absent but awed. “No Earthly idea. . . .”

Karl writhes on, and shifts and clenches around Stephen’s merciless fingers, utterly submerged in sharp-sweet pleasure, and dull-hot ache that keeps pace with that pleasure. Both spiral up toward distinct forms of sacred agony. “_Please, Stephen, pleee—ahhhh!_”

When Karl’s brain comes back from the place where Stephen’s timed prostate pressuring and ball squeezing had sent it, he’s panting and whimpering in a terribly undignified way, bereft at the unpleasant emptiness of his body without some part of Stephen Strange in him.

And Stephen . . . Stephen has removed his crimson tunic and shoved his crimson trousers down to his knees. He’s smiling down at Karl with almost blissed-out affection and fascination. _Serenely bewitched_, is the term Karl would use, had he full command of his faculties. As it is, he can’t take his eyes or attention off Stephen, just as the reverse seems to be true.

“No idea,” Stephen reiterates, sounding fond and appreciative. But that blissed-out smile is going predatory again, and fast, and he’s no longer stroking or squeezing Karl, but himself. Not sparingly, either, despite his girthy prick looking painfully hard and angrily crimson—even more so than Strange’s recently-earned robes. “On your hands and knees for me, gorgeous.”

Karl doesn’t hesitate to obey. Even though he’s less than coordinated in this moment, he immediately moves to adopt the position Stephen demands of him and accepts Stephen’s assistance with moving into it. And once there, on want-weakened knees and hands that shake and wobble, Stephen’s instant proximity behind him makes every hair on his body stand on end.

He bows his head and tries to calm his overwrought body, mind, and heart, but only manages so much with his ear so attuned to the sound of Stephen slicking himself unhurriedly and thoroughly. His gaze is as tangible as an unobstructed ray of starshine: distant but close, cool but thrilling.

Unwavering and acute.

Then, Stephen’s hips and prick press against Karl’s arse, and his hands settle shakily on Karl’s hips. Despite their infirmity, they’re admiring and claiming, and they frame Karl’s body . . . as if _savoring_ the sight before completing it.

After eternal moments, Stephen’s left hand leaves Karl’s hip to feel between their bodies while Stephen shifts to create some room.

Karl groans so loud the fallen stones of distant Castle Krowler must be quivering in their heaps and piles and pits, when the head of Stephen’s prick brushes, then presses against him. Murmuring filthy endearments and fond commands to: _Be good for me, baby, an’ let me in . . . give it to me_, Stephen wastes no time and doesn’t pause to let Karl adjust to the sudden and overwhelming intrusion during or after. Karl’s breathless, wavering yell, from the moment of penetration and as Stephen drives patiently, steadily to the core of him, seems louder than perdition, to his own ears. Louder, even, than the cacophony of his racing, overfull heart.

When Stephen’s prick drags across his prostate, that yell shoots up at least one full, half-sobbing octave.

Finally, Stephen’s prick can’t go any deeper, and Stephen’s leaning close over Karl’s back, with one hand still on his hip and the other balled into a shaking fist and braced on the bed over Karl’s shoulder. Not that Karl, with his squinched-shut eyes, can see it—but he _is_ resting his head in the crook of Stephen’s elbow as he tries to catch his breath around his gasps and sobs.

It literally feels as if Stephen’s filling him so completely that Karl can’t get in enough oxygen to sustain himself.

At this time, Stephen _does_ give Karl a chance to adjust, although—from the soft, ragged commentary and swearing coming from nearer and nearer to Karl’s ear—Stephen’s really just busy fighting not to come.

“How’re you even _real_, sweetheart?” Stephen’s warm, wet lips tickle Karl’s shoulder then stamp tender kisses along it, to Karl’s nape, where those kisses soon become nuzzles. “Either gonna burn my cock off or crush it . . . but what a way to go! _Unh_.”

“Stephen—” Karl moans, soft and even more overwhelmed as Stephen firms the grip on his hip and starts to pull out slowly and slightly. His next series of shallow thrusts grow steadily longer and longer, until Stephen pauses, having pulled out more than halfway, leaving Karl with that awful empty-feeling, once more.

“First time in you and I already don’t wanna leave—_not ever_,” Stephen husks out, leaning in again to press his face into Karl’s hair. He inhales deeply and lets it out as a sigh. “More’n a miracle, _Master_ . . . you’re the _definition_ of _magic_. Hmmmm. And you’re _all mine, aren’tcha?_”

Karl wouldn’t dispute that even if he suddenly could. And he _can’t_, because Stephen’s set up a steady, hard pace that leaves little room for thought, let alone speech. That pace gradually accelerates both in speed and power, until Karl’s body is rocked forward by each thrust. His resumed shouts have become a single constant, broken-voiced moan that’s _sometimes_ Stephen’s name and sometimes merely unspecified pleas.

For obvious reasons, Stephen needs both his hands for balance and bracing, but Karl doesn’t. Yet, at no point does it occur to him help himself along. The last thing he wants—and, also, the first, admittedly—is to come and have _this_ be over. He wants nothing more than to remain in this time and place, with Stephen so close . . . all around him _and_ inside him: safe and secure, sinful and sweet.

With Stephen’s scent, like incense and apples, sweat and magic, become the very air his body craves and on which it runs.

His_ every effort_ is fighting to not come—to keep this moment for as long as possible, even with Stephen targeting his prostate so precisely and successfully on nearly every thrust.

And it’s working . . . not indefinitely, but certainly for a while. Until Stephen’s thrusts gain power but begin to lose rhythm. His compliments and profanity have become grunts and blasphemy that are descending into pained croaks.

“God—_fuck_ . . . gonna come for me, _Master_?” he finally rasps on the backs of several harsh pants. His hips stutter into a faster, more reckless speed and Karl gasps from Stephen’s girth forcing him open so fast, as well as what feels like constant, almost brutal prostate stimulation. “Or ya gonna keep makin’ me put my back into earning that O?”

Again, Karl’s beyond answering, beyond everything. He doesn’t even notice when Stephen pries his hand off his hip with obviously painful effort. But he does notice seconds or eternities later, when that hand, finally warm, cups his balls in a sudden but unyielding grip.

Then . . . tugs and squeezes. _Hard_.

Both Karl and the moment are instantly lost as the orgasm he’d been holding at bay is more than unleashed . . . it’s launched through and from his body like a projectile.

It’s been decades since the Ancient One flung him through the Multiverse, but he remembers how it’d felt: not terrifying, as so many describe it, but exhilarating. Freeing and comforting to realize that he, Karl Mordo, had been simply a speck, one of infinitely many that made up eternal grandeur on a scale of which they couldn’t truly conceive. Not in full.

It had been flying and falling and floating. Karl had been One with existence to the point of becoming nonexistent, himself. In becoming everything, he’d become nothing, simply another bit of free-floating pleasure that was part and parcel of existence’s complete and only expression: The Multiverse.

Returning to his body—_being yanked back by the Ancient One_—had been almost like death. He’d been weeping not just from the transformative beauty of experiencing raw reality, but from the return to his ultimate, grounded, if not eternal reality. . . .

The confines and limitations of his human body.

Karl had been barely functional for days after, unwilling and unable to leave the Ancient One’s bed, to which she’d carried him, herself, upon his return.

For those days, she’d tended to and mothered him quietly, but tirelessly.

“I am sorry, Karl,” she had said—not often, but with concern and humility and sadness. And once, she’d followed that apology with an explanation he hadn’t understood at the time, but had always remembered: “It was my sense that you were as ready as anyone could ever be, and perhaps that wasn’t wrong. But your response to the truth of reality was . . . unexpected. Never have I seen anyone embrace raw existence with such wonder and rapture, and a desire to become indivisible from it. Taking you away from that and depositing you back in your human life may be the cruelest thing I have ever done.”

And her sad, ancient eyes and thin, determined mouth had seemed bleak and bitter, respectively. “But one does what one must. As one surely finds if one lives long enough.” The smile she’d forced onto her pale, tired face had been the usual fond-sad one, but gone rictus-like in Karl’s altered state. “But I do not regret my actions . . . only the dire necessity of them. You _will_ find your way . . . find your way _back there_—without Kamar-Taj and this world, if need be. The tools and will to do so are ineffably _yours_, Karl Mordo. But I doubt that Kamar-Taj and this world will find its way without _you_.”

Still nearly beyond comprehension of more than basic statements, Karl had closed his tear-reddened and swollen-sore eyes and watched his memory of raw reality spin and whirl and pulse . . . until he’d finally slept.

He’d awoken almost forty hours later, more or less himself, if greatly subdued.

It would be months before he’d stopped drifting around Kamar-Taj like a lost spirit looking for its afterlife, let alone before he had the desire or wherewithal to use mystical energy or any form of magic. By the time he’d resumed his life and studies, the world had been on the cusp of a second Great War and everyone’s attention had been on that and the mystical repercussions that’d attended this terrestrial conflict.

Karl had put away his memories of raw reality—raw _existence_. He’d put away the taste of that joy and freedom and safety, like wind and stars and infinity. Like the utter death of loneliness and alone-ness.

He’d packed them away so securely and so deep under the years of his life that for decades, he’d barely thought about the experience beyond the fact of it.

Now . . . total recall is upon him. The Multiverse is within him and around him. It _is_ him. He’s flying and falling and floating, and all is One and beauty and joy and harmony.

Even the body he’s left behind for the second time is a part of that, collapsed to his bed and sprawled under Stephen Strange’s spare frame. The younger man is only half-born up on his trembling arm, while his other arm curls protectively around Karl’s lax, defenseless, captainless body. His hand is covering Karl’s and their fingers are laced together, and Stephen’s frenetic writhing and rhythmlessly thrusting hips still for a few moments.

Then Stephen throws his head back in a scream that Karl can feel but can’t hear, in the astral dimension and submerged-joined with the Multiverse as he is, but he has no doubt all of Kamar-Taj can hear the the sound that accompanies that affecting look of ecstatic completion and its trans-dimensional vibration.

Stephen buries his face in Karl’s shoulder, then the crook of his neck when he starts thrusting again, fast, and desperate as his entire body shakes through his release and flushes practically burgundy.

His hands, however, are icy-pale and surrounded by a mystical aura that pulses with the colors of power and passion and pain.

When he, too, collapses—on top of Karl’s body—he doesn’t go limp, but curls all of him over and around all of Karl now, protective and possessive. And then, only then, does he, too, go limp. He only just manages to turn and angle his head to whisper in the general direction of Karl’s ear.

_Come back, baby,_ reverberates throughout the astral dimension—and the Multiverse—as pure, unstoppable, _powerful_ feeling and will, not words. Only the bits of the Multiverse that used to identify as Karl Mordo (and Baron Mordo) take real notice. They couldn’t _not_. _It’s real pretty out there . . . in a shit-your-pants-in-existential-terror sort of way . . . but . . . it’s kinda nice where I am, too. Gonna be nicer, still, when you’re back here with me. Back in my arms. _Come back_, Karl Mordo. C’mon _home, _sweetheart._

With a call like that—all the welcome and want Karl has never experienced from any one person, up against starshine, endlessness, and all the welcome and wonders of _eternal existence_—there’s really no contest, as far as the bits of Multiverse that were, until recently, _Karl Amadeus Mordo_, are concerned.

It isn’t long—not as those bits nor the rest of the Multiverse reckon it—before Karl Mordo’s body inhales deep and long, despite Stephen Strange’s bony, but substantial weight slumped fully on top of it . . . and still deep _in it_, if gone only half-hard.

Karl’s body _aches_ all over, his vision is blurred and spinning, and his arse is sorer than he can ever remember it being. Even just trying to clench up around Stephen is exhausting and near-impossible.

“Why are you so skinny . . . yet so bloody thick?” he mumble-chuffs irritably and only half-awake, hissing as he quickly shuts eyes that only half-open in the fading daylight. A low, satisfied laugh sounds in his ear, comforting and wicked at the same time. It reverberates pleasantly throughout his pinned, weighed-down, aching-overheated body. “And so bloody _heavy_?”

“Hey, baby . . . welcome back.” Soft, bitten-swollen lips press reverent kisses to his ear, his jaw, and the side of his face, followed by shamelessly intimate nuzzling. “And, also, _please_. _You saw,_ the moment that I dropped trou, that my damn _dick_ basically accounts for two-thirds of my body-mass. An’ ya _didn’t_ seemed displeased about it then or even _five minutes ago_, so, _don’t_ piss on my leg and tell me it’s rainin’, _now_. _Master Mordo_.”

Despite Stephen’s drawling-lazy use of such a needlessly graphic Americanism—and despite said Americanism’s near-unintelligible gist—Karl snorts and _almost_ smiles. But instead, he yawns, shivers, and his body melts into a serene and satisfied puddle under Stephen Strange’s.

The sensation and the sentiment it occasions is already familiar and preferable. _Desirable_. . . .

. . . perhaps, even . . . necessary.

“Stop talking, Strange, and go to sleep,” he commands, and is, himself, fast asleep before Stephen manufactures a smart-aleck answer or—Vishanti preserve—actually _takes heed_.

#

When Karl next stirs—still aching and sore, and sprawled flat on his stomach and with his face half-buried in his pillow—he shoves his half-tucked coverlet off his body and takes stock of his surroundings.

His room is lit only by the chill, mysterious light cast by the waning full moon. So dreamy, yet stark, that unique illumination doesn’t fade to the nearly pitch-black of what must be well into the day’s fourth quarter, so much as the light cuts off whither it will. The line between it and darkness is as clear and sharp as Karl’s instant and intact memory of the afternoon prior.

For a few moments, Karl simply lets the acceptance of the fact of the tryst settle within him and metabolize. The only things that reek of sex and sweat and come more than himself are his sheets and coverlet, though Karl’s fairly certain he, himself, is rather stickier . . . and crustier. The evidence that Karl has given in to his least advisable urges and wants is overwhelming, and railing against it would do him no good, he knows.

Neither would ignoring the fact that he’s also utterly alone in his bed and his space, now. Cold and stiff. As he had more than half-expected he would end up, due to his own track record and what he suspects is Stephen Strange’s.

So, while not surprised, or even disappointed—so he tells himself, and it doesn’t _feel_ like a _lie_, but he’s been unfamiliar with this particular truth for longer than Stephen has been alive—he finds that he is . . . disenchanted with making such accurate and well-informed predictions about human behavior.

Karl had not hoped he’d be wrong, this time—he hadn’t even thought it out that far. But now, in the aftermath, he thinks that it might have been . . . nice to be.

_Being wrong, in this case, might have been nice._ Even if just for a little while.

Telling himself he doesn’t know what he could have expected _had_ St. . .range decided to do something other than discreetly disappear upon satisfying his itch or curiosity—whatever had motivated him to seek Karl’s . . . company—he sighs. Rather than dwell on an impossible to imagine unlikelihood, he would, he knows, do better to drag himself out of bed and to the shower.

He couldn’t wash away facts and truth, but he could limit their reminders and power. And the sooner he started that process regarding this . . . situation, the better.

Stretching, he rolls onto his side, then back, pursuant to sitting up. Every muscle in his body protests such laborious necessity and practically resists his every effort.

He imagines the protests _about to be tendered_ will be memorable, since they already are.

Which means there’s certainly no sense in babying himself along. Just as he’d recognized the need to stop babying Strange. Sooner or later, Karl will have to sit up—_stand up_. Make his way to the bathroom. Cleanse himself as best he could of what had apparently been a one-time indiscretion.

Then meet his gaze in the bathroom mirror. . . .

After that, all that would be needed was to change his sheets and coverlet and, if he wasn’t ready to collapse into his freshly made bed, see to supper, or a reasonable facsimile (sans the company of Master Wong, for once).

All while continuing to put this ill-advised, but clearly meaningless _divertissement_ behind him.

Ignoring his every ache—many of them not at all physical—Karl makes it painstakingly to his feet and pads toward his closet for his bathrobe, trying not to wince at the complaints of his thigh and arse muscles.

Putting the afternoon’s events behind him won’t be easy with such vivid reminders as _every-bloody-damned-step_, obviously. Not that anything ever is.

In the clean, but impersonal bathroom he shares with several masters—his robe hung on the peg on the back of the closed door—Karl runs the water as hot as he can tolerate and lets it not only wash away that which he’d be better off pretending had never happened, but lets it soothe and relax muscles that are tense and tight. Muscles that’d been worked and _over_worked in ways they hadn’t even been used for decades.

He lingers well beyond the point of efficient cleanliness, spending extra time soaping up and rinsing erogenous zones simply for the lovely and recently accrued sense memories that stir. His body occupied, he lets his mind drift whither it wills. For a time, his awareness skim-surfs the lower layers of the astral dimension, soaring half in his physical reality and half in luminous, eternal starlight that’s actually neither stars nor light, but certainly gives way to that as one makes the seamless transition from inner-space to outer space.

It’s a calming bit of distraction that takes Karl’s mind and body off Stephen Strange’s prick and hands, his kisses and embraces, and the increasing and earnest flashes of his eyes and smile. Though. . . .

Not really. Not even for Karl’s determined and redoubled efforts.

Thus, Karl is nearly startled out of his body—quite literally—when arms suddenly wrap around his waist and pull him back into a bony-sturdy body and owning embrace, and against an erection that’s formidable, even while only half-hard. This new presence comes bearing kisses, and leaves them tenderly on the right side of Karl’s face, jaw, and neck, down to his shoulder and over to his nape, then back up to the left side his face, just in time to plant a lingering, excited kiss on Karl’s half-open mouth when he turns to say _hello_.

Rather than verbally deliver his own greeting, Karl responds with languid, but relieved ardor. He maps out Stephen’s mouth and tastes his low, rumbling moans—draws out the kiss until the arms around him tighten desperately, with one hand dropping to and stroking Karl’s prick with arousing assurance. The erection pressed against his left arse-cheek has nearly gouged a hole in it shortly, from lazy, but powerful thrusts that drive Karl’s hips into that stroking, admiring grip.

More than ready for another round like the first—more than thrilled to have that chance at seconds—Karl starts to turn around, meaning to embrace Strange then drag them both back to his bed. To have and be had until they’re both utterly done.

At least, he means to until his rational mind throws figurative cold water on his plans by processing recent events.

“Wait, what. . . ?” he gulps out, glancing back over his shoulder as he starts to turn. But Strange stops him from completing the shift, and pushes Karl gently but firmly, unambiguously against the shower wall, quickly plastering his own body to Karl’s. “You’re _back_? Wh-why? I thought. . . .”

“Baby, I’m about to _eat this fine ass out_, as promised . . . and I only _left_ to scare us up some dinner. It’s waiting on your desk. Didn’t think you’d wake up before Doomsday, let alone before I got back.” St. . .ephen chuckles, low and dirty, and Karl flushes _very, very deeply_. “You’d _better believe_ you and I’ve got unfinished business. And I’m _not_ in a rush to _be finished_, either. Now, _relax_, Master Mordo, and lemme do what I do best.”

Once again gobstruck, Karl nods, and receives a gentle kiss on the mouth. Then, the kisses and nips move along his cheek and ear, around to his nape, then down his neck and between his shoulder-blades. Along the column of Karl’s spine. The small of Karl’s back. Lower, still.

Until Stephen Strange kneels behind him, probably smirking up at him knowingly.

Shaking, shower-warmed hands spread the cheeks of Karl’s arse like they’re opening a long-sought treasure chest, and Stephen swears and mutters distractedly—_fuck, so pretty, baby._ His breath is hot and humid, even in the sluice of water pouring down on them.

He but dives into kissing, teasing, and sucking at the still swollen and sensitive entrance to Karl’s body, until Karl is gasping and moaning quietly. Until his wild, demanding hips seek friction from the smooth shower wall—friction they will not receive from that source.

Until his legs are wobbling and he has to brace his hands on the shower wall and hug it for balance and strength.

And all attempts at sound-modulation go flying out the window and into the evening sky when Stephen finally—without warning or ceremony—wriggles his wet, hot, agile tongue into Karl with a happy, satisfied little huff-groan.

Karl jolts and freezes, as if electrified.

Karl _shouts_—and his shout echoes off the shower tile, and possibly the Earth and sky, for more than a minute.

Karl . . . surrenders to his needs and wants. Surrenders and _submits to Stephen Strange_ without a word of protest, and with all the joy he’s heretofore denied himself.

_ **TBC in Part II** _

**Author's Note:**

> **End notes:  
**  
  
  
**Thanks:**  
  
To anyone giving this a read (and hopefully a comment and/or kudo :-).  
  
  
  
**Resources & References for this fic:**  
  
[Marvel Cinematic Universe Wiki](https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Marvel_Cinematic_Universe_Wiki)  
  
[Marvel Wiki](https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Marvel_Database)  
  
[Genius.com](https://genius.com/) for lyrical inspiration  
  
"1998 Pringles Commercial." Svetlana Boginskaya, Youtube. February 11, 2013. [0:30] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpkPZbgWb-o  
  
  
  
**Powered by:**  
  
beetle’s No Doubt-Flavored Strordo Mix: “[New](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDZSuw00OZ3ZvJXyewCsl9ElTUwBD1MYy)” [16 songs]:  
  
  
Andy Grammer - Good To Be Alive (Hallelujah): https://youtu.be/OOCIptDK6B8  
  
  
  
[TUMBLES with the bug](http://beetle-ships-it-all.tumblr.com)! And [PILLOWFORTS with the bug, too](https://www.pillowfort.io/beetle-comma-the)!


End file.
